'Scrubs' series finale (maybe): Bittersweet symphony

Whether the episode of "Scrubs" that aired Wednesday night was a season finale or a series finale will be up to ABC. After a sweetly funny hour in which J.D. worked his last day at Sacred Heart, though, this fan can say goodbye with no reservations.

I'm with the Janitor...change sucks! Happily, though, the (probably) penultimate episode of "Scrubs" didn't suck at all. Though seriously, these guys have been part of my life for so long that the idea of JD and Turk being responsible adults, living and working apart and canceling on each other to care for their children, kills my inner child a little bit. Tonight even had fewer fantasy moments! But hey, emotional growth is one of the things that make this show so great, right?

This week's "Scrubs" was maybe not as high-larious as the past two, Bahamas-based episodes were, but the return of two of the show's better recurring guests (and a cameo by a young, up-and-coming actress familiar to readers of this site) made it quite enjoyable nonetheless.

Leave it to "Scrubs" to handle a wedding -- in an exotic locale, no less -- with a mix of sweetness, laugh-out-loud humor and genuine weirdness that takes just about all of the Very Specialness out of the episode and makes it just a very nice half-hour of TV.

Let's say you've been working for eight years in an abandoned hospital in the middle of the San Fernando Valley, largely ignored by your peers when it came to all the good work you've been doing. Wouldn't you feel like you deserved a vacation in the Bahamas too?

If "Scrubs" is at its best when it combines ridiculous jokes with serious character-based drama, then tonight's episode was right up there. Even without Zach Braff and his half-beard.

As we've all heard, it's up in the air whether "Scrubs" will return for another season. Tonight, we got a preview of what that season might look like - a vision of Sacred Heart through the eyes of the interns. And I gotta say, though it was a bit scattered, it was far from terrible.

We got a vision this week of what Scrubs might be like without J.D., and it was, uh, eh. But then we got some vintage Turk-J.D. man-crushing, and it was good. And anytime we get a reprise of "Guy Love," I'm OK with that.

For all his misanthropy, narcissism and near-pathological need to be the smartest or most competent guy in the room, Perry Cox has, in fact, usually been the best doctor on the staff at Sacred Heart. So it seemed perfectly in character on this week's Scrubs Power Hour that he would try to take on every last detail of his new job as chief of medicine.

I was glad to hear the news that Scrubs is moving to a new night in March (even if that means it's going to be sacrificed to American Idol) and will only air once a week when it does. I've been enjoying the doubled-up episodes this month, but I'd also like to see the season play out for a while and not feel like ABC is rushing to get it over with.